Behind Blue Eyes
by CeceVolume
Summary: Damon thinks about his place in the world and what he wouldn't give for a second chance to be human.


_I fell in love with the original version of this song by The Who today and now I have to write this. I can't even believe I've never thought to do so before!_

Behind Blue Eyes

_No one knows what it's like  
>To be the bad man<br>To be the sad man  
>Behind blue eyes.<em>

Damon watched after his younger brother and Elena, feeling the all to familiar clench in his heart. He was unable to ignore the human jealousy bubbling inside him even as his sadness grew. It ate at him, making him want to strike out at anything and everything around him. He hated the feeling. He hated that he couldn't have her. He hated that he was never chosen over Stefan.

Though he wanted to flip the switch that turned off his emotions, he _wanted_ to feel the love for her that he felt. He wanted to know that he was still capable of being human because he _missed it_. After over a century and a half of living—most of that being the uncaring vampire he pretended to be these days—he was tired of being the man he was now, missed the man he was in 1864.

But to protect Elena, he couldn't be the gentleman he'd been.

He had to be the bad guy. He had to step aside and let Stefan be the gentleman, the man that Elena deserved. He had to be the one that made the hard decisions that would make him the one she hated because _he wasn't the one that deserved her._

After everything he'd done to his younger brother, he didn't deserve her love. He wouldn't lie to himself and say he didn't want it, but it wasn't going to be his.

Because Stefan was the good brother and he was the bad one. That was the world he lived in and he would just need to learn to live with it.

_No one knows what it's like  
>To be hated<br>To be faded  
>To telling only lies<em>

_"You're right; you have lost me forever."_

Her words rang in his mind every day, even when she'd begun to forgive him. Damon knew that he was never going to regain her trust as he'd had before. Elena would never give him her heart, even if something unbelievable happened with Stefan, because she would never completely trust him.

All because he couldn't allow himself to feel.

His emotions had been turned off for so long, letting them come back on made him feel too deeply. It was to him what human blood was to Stefan. If he'd trained himself a little more, he'd be able to stop himself from going crazy when she told him something he didn't want to hear. He wouldn't have killed her brother, he wouldn't have almost turned her into a vampire, and she wouldn't hate him.

History was repeating itself. Katherine had used him, made him fall in love with her, then tossed him aside because she had wanted Stefan. She'd left him thinking that she was still alive, just waiting for him beneath the church. But if she had been waiting for anyone, pining for them, it had been the younger Salvatore.

Just like Elena was doing now that Stefan had run off with Klaus to pay for Damon's cure.

He laid down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling with the heavy knowledge of his brother's sacrifice weighing on his conscience. Though the sun was already rising, he knew that he wasn't going to fall asleep any time soon. His mind was too full of thoughts to do anything so tame.

_But my dreams  
>They aren't so empty<br>As my conscience seems to be_

When he was asleep, he was truly happy. In his dreams, he could be human with Elena. He could live and die with her, have children with her, grow old with her. He got to walk with her in the sunlight with no magical enchantments to protect him. He had to work for them to stay afloat, but she was _his_.

And he was human.

He knew that it was the only way for Elena to love him over his brother. She would choose a human to a vampire in the end. Someday, that biological clock of hers would send her into the arms of someone that could give kids to her. Then neither Stefan or Damon would be able to win her. They'd have to step aside to let some mortal—_thank _God _Caroline's got her claws in that Mutt idiot—_take care of her.

Then Stefan would know what it was like to be on the sidelines, watching the woman he loved loving someone else.

He immediately tossed out the thought. No, he wanted both his brother and Elena to be happy. Wasn't that why he did what he did? It always came down to the fact that Stefan had to be the good guy, never making the hard decisions.

Damon, as the older brother, had to look out for his brother's happiness. And that was how it had always been meant to be.

So he would be content with his dreams, his wishing, however futilely, for her to be with him as a human. _She would have liked me as a human. If I'd never become a vampire, if I'd been born into a different life, I could have been the one she wanted._


End file.
